Three teens arrested in school burglaries

WAIHEE - Police arrested three teenage boys and recovered nine laptop computers that were stolen when Waihee School classrooms were burglarized last week.

The arrests were made Wednesday after Wailuku patrol officers investigated an anonymous report of a possible suspect in the break-ins, which occurred between Nov. 5 and Saturday at the elementary school, said Capt. Jody Singsank, commander of the Wailuku Patrol District. She said officers developed additional information leading to the identification and arrests of the three suspects.

Two Wailuku boys, ages 16 and 14, and a 14-year-old Waihee boy were arrested and charged with eight counts of second-degree burglary and two counts of attempted second-degree burglary, police said. They were later released to the custody of their parents, with the cases to be sent to Family Court for prosecution, police said.

Police recovered nine of the 10 laptop computers that were stolen, as well as a document camera that was taken. One computer was heavily damaged while the other eight didn't have visible damage, police said. The tenth laptop computer wasn't accounted for.

"This is such good news," Waihee School Principal Leila Hayashida said Thursday after learning the computers had been recovered by police. "I'm so appreciative of the community pitching in to help."

She said she would be contacting police to see when the school might be able to get the computers back. "We'd like to recover the computers as soon as possible so we can put them back into service," she said.

With computers taken from student work stations, some students couldn't do online portions of their studies this week and some teachers lost lesson plans stored in their computers, Hayashida said earlier.

School officials discovered the break-ins at 7 a.m. Saturday when they showed up for an academic planning workshop on campus.

The thieves broke doorknobs to enter classrooms.

Eight classrooms were burglarized and attempts were made to break into two others, police said.

Singsank credited officers Darren Agarano, Kyle Badayos and Emiterio Alvarez for apprehending the suspects and recovering the stolen property, as well as Sgt. Jayson Kozaki, who supervised the investigation. The officers were the same ones who initially responded to the report of the break-in.

* Lila Fujimoto can be reached at lfujimoto@mauinews.com.